Operations such as abrasive blasting, foundry work, stonecutting, rock drilling, quarry work and tunneling commonly utilize silica dust to facilitate the operation or create silica dust as a byproduct. Silica is a hazard for workers at job sites involving silica dust as breathing in the silica dust can cause serious, sometimes fatal illnesses including silicosis, lung, cancer, tuberculosis and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD. Therefore, it is desirable to eliminate the possibility of workers breathing in silica dust as thoroughly as possible.
In order to transfer silica or other dust material from a delivery truck to a customer tank, a transfer duct is connected between an output from the supplier truck's reservoir and an input line on the customer tank. Silica dust is moved through the transfer duct into the customer tank, typically by an air pump or blower. The customer tank also has a vent in order to allow air to flow through the customer tank, as opposed to building pressure within the tank due to only having air forced into the tank with no outlet. Currently, during silica transfer, a dust bag is connected to the vent of the customer tank. The dust bag functions to provide a visual indication of pressure within the tank, and to mitigate expulsion of silica into the air in the job site environment by allowing air to travel through the dust bag while hampering the ability of silica to escape the bag through an open zipper. However, this process is imperfect, since silica dust is light and is easily picked up by air flowing through the bag—thus, some silica dust does escape from the bag. The present invention seeks to improve on this process by providing a permanent fixture on the job site which functions to much more effectively prevent silica dust from contaminating the air at a job site by filtering the air flow output from the customer vent during silica transfer.